Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Seems like the Crew are really gunning for African players who played in Belgium before. Assan Jatta never showed up for his trial but Papy Kimoto is in town according to Shawn Mitchell:

Congolese forward Papy Kimoto, 32, began an unexpected and rather informal trial today. Looked speedy. The well-traveled Kimoto has friends in Cincinnati and played professionally since 1996 including stints in Belgium, Israel and most recently Cyprus (second-division Atromitos). He'll join the Crew again on Thursday

Atromitos was in the first-division in Cyprus this past season when Kimoto played for them. Kimoto was signed in January 2009 and started 8 games in the second half of the season for Atromitos netting 6 goals. However, that wasn't enough to keep Atromitos up in the first-division and as a result Kimoto is looking for a better league.

Kimoto played in second division Belgium in 2008 with RFC Liege netting 6 goals in 16 games (one of them in the video below).

Kimoto also played on the national team for the Democratic Republic of Congo making 54 appearances between 1997-2006 and netting 13 goals.

Overall, Papy Kimoto doesn't appear to be that prolific of a scorer with only 65 goals in 275 appearances from 1999-2009.

VIDEO- Kimoto scores the fourth goal in this video(at the 2:13 mark) in 2008 for RFC Liege against Jatta's former side SK Lierse:

One thing I deduce from our first two targets is that Bliss has some sort of scout or connection in Belgium who is feeding him names. I also don't think we will be signing any marquee names with our $200,000. If anything it's going to be two guys at $100,000 a piece. Maybe one of them will be this Kimoto fellow and the Crew will pick up someone else. They will be serviceable players but not world beaters. As we can't afford types like Moldanado who are out of our pay scale, especially if we are looking for two players.